ANCA provided invaluable help in developing custommade software for (Seco's) next generation insert tip.Without this help, grinding (them) would have beenimpossible.

Christian Carlsson - Seco Tools AB, Norrkoping, Sweden

ANCA’s Renowned FlexibilityANCA’s Renowned Flexibility

Leaders in drill design such as Sandvik, Iscar, Seco and YG-1 have long relied on theflexibility of ANCA’s machines and tool grinding software to bring their new drillconcepts to market.

Grind any Type of DrillStandards, High Performance, Steps, Insert Tips, Combination drills, Specials, Carbide, HSS …

We've been doing lots of custom insert tip jobs forsome of our bigger customers. Drill insert tips typicallyhave extremely tight tolerances on some referencefeatures and require very specialised tooling formeasurement and parts handling. This level ofcustomisation is quite common on many of theprojects we get for the TX7.

Duncan Thompson - Product Manager, ANCA TX Range

Drills have moved on from the basic definit ion of a “spinning tool designed to generate a cylindrical hole”. Standards, high performance, step, profile, insert t ips,

combinat ion drill/reamers are all examples of modern drills. And they are produced in a variety of materials; carbide, HSS and even stainless steel for medical

applicat ions. Some are straight forward to grind, buy many have very complex geometry and process requirements.

ANCA has long been popular w ith innovat ive drill makers who want to

push the boundaries. Some of our major breakthroughs (like the P-axis,

blanket grinding and 3D modeled K-Land) have come from working w ith

customers very closely on new and exot ic drill designs and manufacturing

processes. These unusual requests begin life as special projects, but soon

find their way into our standard software. ANCA’s ToolRoom suite is now

capable of grinding a huge range of standard and not-so-standard drills.

So if your drill design is a bit out of the ordinary, you can be confident that

ANCA w ill do everything we can to help you grind it successfully on your

ANCA tool grinder.

A combinat ion tool (Drill Reamer) designed using tool segments

Huge Range of Drill PointsSelect pre-configured drill points or customize a standard drill point

The drill w izard includes point and click support for 24 different drill points*. You can select facet, rolled and conical relief points w ith a range of gash profiles, 3

flute points or modern web thinned, centre cutt ing designs such as the Sandvik Delta, Hertel SE and Kennametal KSEM series drill points.

ANCA > Applications

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If the drill point you want to design or grind is not available in the point and click menu, then you can create just about any geometry you like by mixing and

matching a point grinding cycle (such as facet, conical or rolled relief) w ith a gashing operat ion (eg: mult i-gash). You can customize your drill point design even

further w ith extra features like K-land, chip breakers, chamfer, corner radius or rolled chamfer.

*Some drill points are purchased options and some drill points may be protected by intellectual property laws (such as patents, design registration or copyright) in your region. It is the

responsibility of the user to ensure they are appropriately licensed to use the ANCA software and machine to produce or re-sharpen such drills. ANCA accepts no liability for the inappropriate or

illegal use of the software or machine.

Multi-Directional Flute DesignFit a standard wheel to your flute or design the perfect custom wheel, automatically with iFlute. You choose …

There are 2 ways to look at flute design in drills. The first is to figure out which of your exist ing standard wheels w ill do the job, and what grinding sett ings it

needs to form the flute shape that ’s a best match to your drill point lip and core depth. This is where ANCA’s straight lip approximator comes in. But the other,

more tradit ional way of looking at flute design, is to start w ith the desired lip shape and core depth, design a flute shape to meet these criteria and then

generate a custom wheel shape to suit the flute shape. For this, you’ll benefit great ly from ANCA’s iFlute opt ion.

iFlute is a sophist icated software applicat ion that does the hard work of

figuring out the opt imal wheel shape for a given flute shape. You can

import flute shapes from CAD or you can generate flute shapes direct ly in

iFlute, which also includes a straight lip generator tool.

There a lots of features to adjust the flute and wheel shapes w ithin iFlute.

One typical scenario is that you design your perfect flute shape but the

generated wheel shape might not be opt imal. For instance, it may have a

sharp edge (which would blunt quickly), or be off the centre line (which

can generate excessive torsional forces on the drill). But you can tweak the

wheel shape and alignments, and the software w ill automatically highlight

the difference those changes would make to the flute shape. You can go

back and forth like this, refining the flute and wheel shape unt il you are

happy w ith the result , then simply send these sett ings to your ANCA tool

grinder for dressing and grinding. Dressing and grinding on the same

machine is the most accurate way to get a perfect flute.

Alternat ively, from iFlute you can export a DXF CAD file w ith the wheel

geometry for external manufacture and/or dressing of your designed shape.

For a smoother and simpler wheel dress, you can specify the wheel shape

curve to be approximated by lines and arcs.

If you are grinding large quant it ies of Tungsten Carbide drills, you’ll probably

opt to have diamond wheels made off-site to your designed shapes, but if

you are grinding HSS drills or medical instruments, you have a number of

addit ional opt ions. You can dress standard wheels or dress-able CBN wheels

to your opt imum shape direct ly on the machine. There’s also a new breed

of dressable Ceramic, Aluminium Oxide wheels w ith modified grain patterns

which you can dress on your machine. These wheels are capable of

incredible flut ing product ivity. See ANCA’s solut ion for high speed flut ing of HSS for more details.

Graphical Design of Complex Profiles

iFlute solving a wheel shape for a given flute shape

imported from CAD

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Go beyond basic step drills with our visual profile designer

The profile editing function is very good. Withit, you can use a standard wheel to grind anykind of profile.

Wang Feng - Dalian Top-Eastern Drills Co., Dalian, China

Whilst the most complex drill many people grind is a one-step, step drill, the

ANCA drill w izard and iGrind software packages in the ToolRoom suite are

capable of much more complicated drill profiles. You can build up a drill

profile using lines, tapers, curves, splines, fillets and chamfers, or input your

profile direct ly from a CAD file.

You can even sketch out a shape for the drill core using the core profile

editor. It ’s not unusual for a drill to taper the core back then up for a small

sect ion to promote chip flow away from the cutt ing edges

iGrind then automatically produces a tool path for your flut ing wheel (both

standard and formed wheels) to match this core profile.

Edge Treatment AnywhereAutomatic 3D calculations let you put K-Lands almost anywhere, even on step chamfers

There are several ways to add edge treatment to your drills. If you are

designing the complete drill including the flute and relief surfaces, the tool

grinding software w ill calculate K-Land surfaces precisely by generat ing and

interrogat ing a full 3D model of your tool.

Sometimes, however, you are not designing the flute or relief surface, such

as when resharpening drills, or manufacturing drills from pre-fluted blanks. In

these situat ions, the machine must first “find” the edge of the drill prior to

adding the K-Land or C-Land. This is where K-Land digit izing comes in. You

can specify mult i-point digit izing on drill t ips, step lips or flute edges and the

software automatically matches your K-Land or C-Land to the drill’s actual

geometry.

Step Beyond the WizardryCustomised user interfaces, complex lands and combination tools. Unleash the full power beyond the standard ANCA drill wizard

The drill w izard gives you a great head start to grind lots of drills. But there are special drills that require more than the w izard offers. The drill w izard is built on

top of the standard iGrind software so the full power of iGrind is always close by when you need it .

The flexibility of the ANCA software unfolds in layers, depending on how deep you need to go to get your job done. For example ...

Design a drill profile using lines, tapers, curves,

splines, fillets and chamfers, or input a DXF file

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Consistent K-Land widths on complex tip and gash

profiles. A result of 3D K-Land modeling

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Standard and Advanced Parmeters in iGrindIn most cases where the drill w izard doesn’t take you far enough, you’ll just

need to select extra operat ions in iGrind and modify the standard; and

perhaps advanced – parameters.

Combination Tools usingTool SegmentsIf your tool is a combinat ion tool w ith dissimilar, but linked sect ions (such as

a drill reamer), use the tool segments feature, which lets you combine

mult iple tool features into a single tool.

Overriding Common Parameters for a SingleOperationTo make normal data entry simple, many parameters are linked to mult iple

operat ions. For example, if you change the value of the common

parameter; Flute Length, it w ill impact the length of both the flut ing and C

land operat ions. But at t imes, you may need to separate these parameters.

Using the unlink tool (∞), you can disconnect a parameter from its common

ancestor and set the value independently, or even automatically set it as a

funct ion of some other parameter. And in rare cases, you may even need

to break the symmetry between different flutes. Some parameters; such as

flute index (orientat ion) allow flute specific unlinking.

'Add extra operations' page in iGrind

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Tool segments used to link discrete sections of a

custom drill

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Disconnecting the Flute Length between fluting and C-

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Varying a Parameter Over the Grind LengthNormally, a parameter is constant over the ent ire grinding length. But w ith

some parameters (eg: Radial Land), you can use the complex value w izard

(∑) to vary the parameter over the grind length. Helix is one such

parameter, which is varied often enough that it has its own w izard to help

set it up.

Write Your Own NC CodeIf these flexibility tools don’t take you far enough, then we also have

several tools that let you drill down to the NC code and machine kinematics

at the very heart of the CNC so you can do almost anything you can

imagine. For example, NC GUI lets you add a custom user interface

parameter to an operat ion and NC Entry lets you write NC code to modify

the behavior of a standard grinding cycle.

W ith enough skill, you can even write your own special operat ion cycle in

NC code (we use EPPL, a language based on ISO G-Codes, but w ith lots of

extra features) and Special Operat ions Manager to include it in the standard

iGrind user interface for your operators to use.

land operations

Using the Complex Parameter Wizard to correct tool

deflection induced errors: 1 – Tapered radial land

caused by deflection. 2 – Adjusting the radial land

from shank to end of tool. 3 – The adjusted tool

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Using NC GUI to add a custom parameter to an

operation: 1 – Define the new parameter. 2 – Add the

EPPL (NC code) to the operation. 3 – The new

parameter appears in the User Interface for operators

to set.

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Scripting Family of Parts ProgramsSimple user interfaces that let your operators easily grind whole families of your special drills

ANCA Script ing is a macro language and Graphical User Interface (GUI)

builder, designed for building family of parts programs for your specials. A

common way to use script ing is to present your operators w ith a scanned

blueprint of your part on-screen, w ith data entry boxes on a few key

geometric features. The operator enters these parameters and the script

then fills in the blanks and act ivates the appropriate grinding cycles and

parameters to grind your custom tool.

Process Model FlexibilityFrom R&D departments, through special production and re-sharpening shops to full-scale drill manufacturing

ANCA has worked for years, very closely w ith drill grinders from mult i-nat ionals down to one man shops and we understand there is a range of business models

in the drill grinding business.

Shops that grind drills often align their processes and act ivit ies according to their main funct ion, either R&D, manufacturing or resharpening:

ANCA tool grinders and the ToolRoom suite of software are flexible enough to support any of these business models. Here’s how:

Research and Development – Drill DesignAt the leading edge of drill design, cutt ing tool engineers sometimes use

the Siemens PLM NX CAD/CAM system to develop their designs. ANCA

direct ly supports NX for drill prototyping in a couple of very helpful ways.

Firstly, the ANCAM post processor for NX produces ANCA

Scripting in action; 1 – Best practice you want to

capture. 2 – Enter this curve. 3 – The script. 4 – Click

the script to run it

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ANCA provided invaluable help in developingcustom made software for (Seco's) nextgeneration insert tip. Without this help,grinding (them) would have been impossible.

Christian Carlsson - Seco Tools AB, Norrkoping, Sweden

compatible wheel paths for any complex geometry designed using

NX.

Secondly, the ANCAM operat ion in the iGrind software on your

ANCA tool grinder’s CNC provides direct access, shop floor

compensat ion ability*. The software compensates for wheel size

changes (essent ial after wheel dressing) and gives you fine control

over roughing and finishing passes for any NX generated wheel path;

all w ithout returning to NX to regenerate paths.

*Suitable for drill prototyping. Production drill grinding usually requires the larger set of

compensation tools available only for tools designed directly in ToolRoom (ie: iGrind or Drill

Wizard).

Research and Development – Drill PrototypingA high performance design for a new drill is no good if you can’t make it .

Giving you the ability to grind newly designed drills, whether from blueprint

or CAD, has been one of ANCA’s key strengths for years. Lots of features

and opt ions are at your fingert ips to assist you in quickly turning your drill

designs into metal. Some of them include →

If these drill prototyping features aren’t enough, then ANCA w ill happily

work w ith your engineers to build custom software for your drill designs and

integrate this into your standard user interface. ANCA’s licensing model

allows you to protect your intellectual property yet st ill allow other’s

restricted manufacturing or sharpening rights.

The ANCAM architecture provides shop floor

adjustments (example shown is a medical component)

CAD overlays for profiles and flutes

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A custom drill point design

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Manufacturing – Pre-Production PlanningPre-product ion planning ensures that each t ime an order for a part icular tool

is received; it ’s as easy and efficient as possible for the operator to setup,

and that the batch is ground as product ively as possible. Here are some

features of ANCA ToolRoom that help →

Manufacturing – Volume Drill ProductionVolume drill product ion is all about quick setup, fast cycle t imes and low

operator intervent ion during the batch. See Product ivity for more details.

This is where the work done in pre-product ion planning pays off. But

volume product ion also benefits from flexibility. For example →

Manufacturing – Custom Drill ProductionModern CNC tool and cutter grinding machines have allowed small shops to

economically make drills; both standard and custom - to order. This type of

job is where the full power and flexibility of the ANCA ToolRoom software

really shines. In custom drill product ion, programming and setup t ime can

dominate over manufacturing t ime, so ANCA provides a wealth of smart

software tools to help you cut programming and setup t imes to a

minimum →

Automatic visual preview of saved tools

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Wheel exchanger on TXcell lets you use less wheels

per pack to avoid interference, gives you more options

for roughing and finishing wheels and lets you bring

replacement wheels on-line automatically

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Drill wizard to let you quickly define a tool from

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The regrinding process on high performancedrills is second to none. We often getcompliments that our tools look and workbetter than “factory”.

Jonathan Wild - RI Carbide, Smithfield, USA

Drill ResharpeningIn drill sharpening, you want lots of flexibility to easily sw itch regrind

operat ions on or off; depending on the condit ion of the drill. The machine

should determine as much as possible about the drill automatically, but you

also want plenty of opt ions to adjust the geometry to match those difficult

to grind drills. Sharpening drills starts by select ing Resharpening in the drill

w izard. This selects the most popular operat ions for regrinding the drill point

- point relieving and gashing and for step drills – step relieving, then fills out

the operat ion w ith typical parameters.

But you are not restricted during regrinding. Resharpening is built on the

standard ANCA ToolRoom platform so all the manufacturing operat ions of

ToolRoom are also available for difficult resharpening jobs. The end goal is

to quickly recondit ion the drill to its "as-new" condit ion.

© Copyright ANCA Pty. Ltd.

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Selecting resharpening in the drill wizard

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